The French Mistress (45 page)

“If it pleases you, sir, I’ve another thought,” I said. “In the future, I’ll invite Lord de Croissy to my rooms, and you can meet with him there instead. I’ll remain quietly to one side, but I’ll promise to intercede if he becomes too unbearable, and spare you the vexation.”

“What an admirable suggestion, Fubs,” Charles said. “Though I pity you, having to see more of de Croissy.”

I smiled. “If it pleases you, sir, then I’m content.”

Such an arrangement would also keep me knowledgeable of whatever the ambassador, and therefore Louis, said to Charles. It would help preserve my place between the two, but I was wise enough not to say that before Charles now. He’d no need of vexation from me, either.

He scattered the last of the crumbs before the ducks and sat back against the bench, his long legs stretched comfortably before him. He slipped his arm around my shoulders and I leaned against him, my head comfortably against his chest.

“You can calm me like no other, Louise,” he said softly. “You bring me peace.”

“If it pleases you, sir,” I said again, “then I am content.”

And at that moment, I was.

 

 

Within the week, I learned with the rest of England how Charles planned to make the country a place of “Christian grace and tolerance.” It had always been one of Charles’s most admirable ambitions. Having witnessed the strife and wickedness that came from religious intolerance during Cromwell’s Puritan reign, Charles had always hoped that under his rule, religious differences would cease to be an excuse for conflict. He saw no reason why any man could not worship as suited his preference, so long as his faith brought no harm to his neighbor. Those who would most benefit were Catholics, and the various dissenting nonconformists, including Ana baptists and Quakers. These were but a tiny minority of England’s population, with most following the Anglican Church, but it was a minority that had suffered greatly at the hands of the majority. This Charles meant to end.

He had tried to bring this about once before in 1662, soon after he’d returned to his throne, when he had tried to have Parliament agree to a declaration of tolerance. Parliament, being full of stubborn Anglicans, had refused.

Now Charles hoped to try again while Parliament was out of session. Reminding his people that, as king, he was in supreme control of ecclesiastical matters as well as secular ones, he issued the Declaration of Indulgence. Not only did this declaration grant to Catholics and nonconformists the right to worship as they pleased within their own homes, but also suspended all penal laws against them. It was a bold move, a noble move, and it had scarcely been made before the outcry rose against it.

As can be imagined, the declaration was seen less as a plea for tolerance than as a marked advantage for Catholics. At once rumor and bigotry overwhelmed any sensible discussion. It was believed the Pope would soon claim England as his own, with waves of invading priests and cardinals determined to forcibly convert every honest Anglican, and to burn his house and rape his women if he dared resist. Exactly how this was to happen, I could not fathom; fear and disgust can persuade even logical persons of the most absurd beliefs.

Once again the king’s wisdom was questioned. Given that the disastrous Stop of the Exchequer was still fresh in people’s minds, this new declaration did little to help his popularity with his people. Nor did it help that, soon after, Charles also issued a round of general honors. Nearly all of his closest counselors (those who formed the so-called Cabal) benefited: Lord Ashley was made Earl of Shaftesbury, Lord Arlington was granted an earldom and Lord Lauderdale a dukedom. Since these gentlemen were already known to be either Catholics or sympathetic to the faith, their elevation only added to the general hysteria.

As a Catholic myself, and especially a Catholic personally favored by the king, I immediately felt the fresh waves of hatred and attack. Clods of dirt and stones were thrown at my carriage if I dared to go out, and foul insults shouted at me. The same befell Lady Cleveland, who was likewise of the Romish faith. I feared for myself and my unborn child. Instead of benefiting Charles’s Catholic friends, as he had hoped, the declaration served only to make us less the beneficiaries of a new freedom than the targets of intolerance.

Charles had said I brought him peace, and perhaps for that reason he kept to his ministers and other counselors for the rest of March, and I saw little of him. He was not in the humor for peace, not from me or anyone else.

On the sixth of April, he declared war on the Republic of the Seven United Provinces. Finally—or rather again—the Dutch were England’s enemy.

 

 

Was there ever a man at the start of a war who wasn’t convinced that victory would be swift and easy?

Certainly that was the way with both Charles and Louis. Both kings were certain that the Dutch would prove no challenge at all to their combined might, and that between them they’d be merrily carving up the spoils by the middle of summer at the latest. Louis hoped to claim as his the various lands agreed upon in the Secret Treaty, while Charles anticipated putting several important foreign ports under an English flag, plus helping to plump his dwindling treasury with a few fat prizes plucked from the Dutch navy and shipping.

Certainly it would seem that the alliance between France and England had the overwhelming advantage, and they’d every reason for cheery optimism. Between the two countries, the French and English forces vastly outnumbered the Dutch in men, ships, and guns. Louis himself rode at the head of his army of more than one hundred twenty thousand men as they marched northward to invade Holland, his confidence so high that he’d brought along his own historian to document his glorious victory.

Not to be outdone, Charles made his first move even before his official declaration, sending the English fleet to intercept the Smyrna Fleet in the English Channel. Reputed to be the richest prize on the seas, the Smyrna Fleet was the annual convoy of Dutch merchantmen sailing from the Levant through the Mediterranean with an armed navy escort to protect them from Barbary pirates. They scarcely expected to be attacked by the English so close to their home port, but despite having surprise in their favor, the Dutch escorts beat back the English, who to Charles’s humiliation captured only a handful of prizes.

Alas, this first engagement proved a sign of more misfortune to come. On the seventh of June, part of the English fleet was surprised by the Dutch at Southwold Bay, off the coast of East Anglia, and the battle that raged was enormously costly to both sides. Serving as commander, the Duke of York had two successive flagships destroyed and sunk beneath him, and despite the seeming advantage of the English, the Dutch were finally able to retreat into the fog without any clear victor decided.

Surely Louis’s army—by repute the greatest since those of the ancient Caesars—would have better success against the tiny Dutch army. The French easily poured over the first two provinces of Gelder land and Utrecht, and Louis and Charles, believing the war was over, wished to begin negotiations for peace. But once again, the Dutch proved that surprise and cleverness can confound sheer might. Faced with invasion, the Dutch turned to their boyish leader (and Charles’s nephew) twenty-one-year-old William of Orange, who ordered the famous network of dykes released and the Dutch Water Line flooded, creating an impossible barrier for the French army. Louis had no choice but to retreat, and plan a fresh attack in the winter, when the water would freeze and be crossable.

The English people could find little cheering in such woeful news, proving as it did that the Dutch were still their superiors. Many began urging Charles to sue for peace soon after the debacle at Southwold Bay. With so little support for the war or hope that it could be won, desertions ran high among the English soldiers and sailors, and officers complained about the flagging morale of those who remained.

Still Charles seemed unaffected both by his country’s despair and his war’s lack of glory. Instead he insisted that everything was well and good, and that victory lay just over the horizon. He wrote long letters of instruction to Lord Arlington, his emissary at the peace negotiations, listing terms and conditions when in truth England had yet to win anything. He made excuses for his brother’s incompetence at Southwold Bay. He visited the fleet at the Nore in Chatham repeatedly, taking his Lord Chancellor, Lord Shaftesbury, and other advisers with him, as if on a summer pleasure junket. In early July, he even took Her Majesty and her attendants with him, as if a trip to the mouth of the Thames were a fit place for his queen.

And where, pray, was I amidst all this?

I was nearly nine months gone with Charles’s child, my poor body so large and clumsy that I scarce left my bed. The palace was nearly empty, with everyone who’d somewhere else to go gone from London. I was left with only Bette and my other servants and a pair of midwives, who took turns watching over me in case my travails began early. My rooms seemed unbearably hot and close, and I was too large to find any comfort in food or drink. Without family or true friends about me, I felt abandoned and melancholy, and more than a little fearful of the coming birth. I wrote letters to my unborn child in the event that I died, I wept into my pillow, and I prayed, for myself, for my child, and for Charles.

My pains began before dawn on the twenty-sixth of July. Following the best advice for safe birthing, the windows to my rooms were sealed shut and roaring fires set in my hearths, no matter that it was the middle of summer. In addition to the midwives, I was attended by Mrs. Chiffinch, a cronish but venerable servant in the king’s household. It was her responsibility to oversee and verify all royal births, and in Charles’s service, she’d witnessed more than her share.

Because this was my first child, my pains were long and my labor so tedious that I feared I’d never be delivered from my suffering. Finally, as the sliver of a new moon was rising in the summer sky, my son was born, a large and lusty boy covered with muck and the blood of my suffering.

“Aye, that’s His Majesty’s get, no mistake,” Mrs. Chiffinch proclaimed as the nursemaids washed my son—my son!—and wrapped him in his first swaddling. “Mark his size, and his hands, and the black hair. He’s the king’s, and I’ll swear to it. I wish you much joy of him, mistress.”

“Thank you,” I said wearily as they finally put the babe in my arms. His tiny mouth opened like a bird’s, and his head flopped awkwardly against my chest.

“He’s hungry, mistress,” explained one of the nursemaids. “Poor little mite. We’ll give him over to the wet nurse soon as she arrives.”

I’d planned to bind my breasts to stop my milk and let him be suckled by another, as was the custom for ladies. But when I gazed down at that tiny, toothless mouth, my eyes filled with tears and my heavy breasts ached with milk.

“I can’t let him go hungry,” I said, fumbling at the front of my gown. “I can’t ever let him go without.”

“Ah, that’s a proper new mother speaking,” the nurse said with approval. “Here, it won’t hurt you, and ’twill do him more good than you know.”

She helped me place the child at my breast, and at once he began to suckle, making tiny mewing noises of contentment, a contentment that matched my own. I was exhausted and torn, but I’d never been happier.

“What shall you call him, mistress?” asked the nurse. “Have you a name?”

“Charles,” I said, the only name I’d ever considered. “His name is Charles.”

Mrs. Chiffinch cackled. “ ’ Course it’s Charles,” she said. “That’s what they all name the first one. Yours is the fifth o’ that name that His Majesty’s sired, you know.”

“But this is the first that he’s sired with me,” I said softly, and as I touched the dark, damp curls on our new son’s head, I resolved my little Charles would always be that way: first among his peers, first at Court, but most of all, first in his father’s affection.

And with me as his mother, how could it be otherwise?

Chapter Twenty

WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON
August 1672

 

 

 

A
lady’s lying-in is usually the month following childbirth. The lady is permitted to remain abed the entire time, dressed prettily in a lace-trimmed smock with ribbons or a cap in her hair and, whilst recovering from her ordeal, receive the congratulations of her acquaintance. Special dishes and punches are served, and the lady receives gifts for her new child, as well as hears the gossip and news she may be missing during her time away from the greater world. At the end of lying-in, the lady is given churching, a special blessing by a priest in gratitude of her safe delivery, and is then welcomed back into her ordinary life.

But because my son was born at a time when my acquaintance were so scattered, I decided to let my lying-in continue beyond its traditional length, until the Court returned to the palace. No one would count the days, or leastways not to my face. It also gave me further time to recover my beauty, and for my little Charles to lose his wizened quality and plumpen, and become even more handsome. Of course to me he’d always been handsome, a true twig from his father’s tree, but I also knew how cruel people could be about mocking a homely babe, and I didn’t think I could bear that.

There was another reason for extending my lying-in. The priest who’d come for my counsel had sourly informed me that churching was reserved for women who were lawfully wedded, and refused my arguments that children of kings followed a different precedence. Impudent man, to dictate the laws of God! I’d rely on Lord de Croissy to persuade him of his error, or beseech Her Majesty’s confessor once they returned to the palace. This might only be the first test for me and my son, but I’d not surrender meekly to it.

The greater challenge, however, was Charles. I’d sent word to him immediately after his son’s birth. I expected him to rush to my side, to display the same joy over our new child as I did.